Emerging Technologies in Agriculture and Food Science

Pomegranate is an essential fruit bearing tree well cultivated in the world. Biological potential and nutritional value were very reputed in both of pomegranate fruit and its by-products, such as seeds. According to the presented information in literature, the use of pomegranate seed as a natural food preservative can be explained by its phytochemicals richness. Based on this phenolics content of pomegranate seed (PS) extracts, the current chapter will talk about its successful use as natural preservative agent in the development of healthier and shelf stable food products. This document speaking of the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities evaluation of PS and its principal active phenolic compounds identified and quantified by advances in the separation sciences and spectrometry, will perform a comprehensive review of the scientific literature. Furthermore, the impact of using PS on the food quality and agrifood products was also evaluated.

Nowadays, consumers are more aware and conscious about health concerns related to foods, which increase their demand for more safe food, particularly meats, free of additives such as preservatives, and if so with natural ones. In line with this, bacteriocinogenic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and their bacteriocins have been widely screened and studied in the last years in view of their use in meat biopreservation. This chapter presents an emphasised overview regarding enterococci and their produced bacteriocins (enterocins) as part of interesting LAB and biomolecules with promising potentialities to be used in meat preservation as alternatives to synthetic preservatives thus satisfying consumers’ demand for healthy and “bio” meat. Indeed, the characteristics of enterococci and enterococcal bacteriocins were described based on published literature. Further, we have reviewed some of the research on their applications for biopreservation of meat and meat products with a focused discussion on diverse topics such as their advantages as well as the challenges and limits of their use in meat. Finally, the synergistic approaches based on combinations of enterococcal protective cultures and/or enterococcal bacteriocins with other technological concepts to improve safety and quality of meats are reported and discussed.

Severe yield losses due to crop infections with pathogens such as bacteria, viruses and fungi are challenging issues in agriculture for decades across the world. To limit the impact of disease damage in economically important crops and to ensure agricultural sustainability, developing new diagnostic methods for the rapid and accurate detection of plant pathogens is essential as it helps to prevent major yield losses and preserve a good quality of products at the postharvest stage. In this context, serological techniques such as ELISA and molecular protocols based on PCR, quantitative PCR, isothermal amplification, microarrays and RNA-Seq-based nextgeneration sequencing are leading to more accurate detection for the most destructive plant pathogens, which reduced the economic losses due to plant disease infections. Despite their reliability in the design of an efficient management program for several plant diseases, the performance of these techniques is sometimes limited by, the unknown distribution of the studied disease, the existence of asymptomatic infections and the lack of validated sampling protocols. Recently, more sophisticated techniques such as thermography, fluorescence imaging, hyper-spectral techniques and biosensors relying on various parameters such as morphological change, temperature change, transpiration rate change and bio-recognition elements such as enzyme, volatile organic compounds, antibody, and DNA/RNA released by infected plants have been applied, either for on-site diagnostic or for detecting plant diseases over large areas. This review briefly describes the various techniques used for plant disease diagnosis and their evolution to meet the contemporary challenges.

Agriculture plays a critical role in the global economy, and pressure on agricultural systems will continue to increase as the world’s population grows. Modern agricultural techniques should take into account both the increased need for efficiency and the challenges posed by climate change, which together define the competing needs for sustainable farming and increased food production. Precision agriculture (PA) refers to the use of both advanced sensor technologies and state-of-the-art data analysis techniques in order to develop data-driven decision support systems. PA can help farmers to optimize crop management through accurate yield prediction and the timely detection of plant diseases and pests. Similar techniques and sensors to those used in precision agriculture can be used in the management and monitoring of livestock or fish farms, which this paper will introduce for completeness. A survey of machine learning methods will be presented in order to provide researchers and endusers with an up-to-date starting point for their projects and use-cases.

Information on the environment, coverage, spatial division along by way of natural resources is a condition to accomplish the objectives of biological agriculture and sustainable development. Geographic Information System (GIS) suggests a perfect setting for incorporating spatial and characteristic information on the environment and natural resources. Furthermore, remote sensing permits making accurate records on an assortment of landscape factors which are employed for both creating baseline in addition to derivative records on natural resources used for a range of agricultural actions. Innovations in predicting and telecommunication help in the valuable functioning of most advantageous land use strategies/exploitation strategies. This chapter provides a general idea about the role of remote sensing, Geographic Information System, and digital photogrammetry. Furthermore, the chapter also identifies the progress and developments in captor technology, records processing and explanation/investigation and combination of geospatial records and data.